Wins ACT Clubman and ACT Novice Award at Monaro Rally
Canberra’s 21-year-old Chris Stilling continues his winning streak in only his second event as a rally driver at the Monaro stages rally, held near Cooma recently.
Stilling took out the Novice and the ACT Clubman awards during the event and finished second outright in the NSW Development series despite having completed only two rounds in the series.
Bathurst’s Jack Mobbs had a consistent drive ending up as the series winner of the NSW development series aboard a Subaru 4WD. Stilling was ahead of Mobbs for most of the event until his 2WD sustained a flat tyre in the final stages of the event.
Chris Stilling driving the Manning Automotive Datsun Stanza attributes his achievements to his father, Australian Classic rally champion, Trevor Stilling, and his navigator, Rae Waterhouse from Penrith’s Waterhouse Performance. ‘Rae keeps me on course and provided significant support and advice’, said Stilling.
When asked about the event Stilling said. “we settled into a good pace and were consistent throughout the day with competitive times for the majority of the rally which surprised us”
“A flat tyre on Stage 9 dropped us in the overall results but with only the first 8 stages counting towards the ACT Clubman we were hoping we did enough for a win in that category”, said Stilling.
Stilling ended up winning both the ACT Clubman and Novice awards. With one round of the ACT series left Stilling is currently leading the series Novice award and sitting in the top three of the ACT Clubman series not bad considering the current leader in the Clubman series has points in all 6 rounds to date (only 5 count for series) and Stilling has only completed two of the rounds to date having won the category at Narooma and now Cooma.
“Looking at his consistent performance it is easy to forget that this is only his second event as a rally driver”, said Sponsor Simply Music Management, “we are clearly backing a winner”.
The Kosciusko Automotive Monaro stages rally had a mix of very fast shire roads and rough forestry roads testing many drivers. Results could not be confirmed until this week with the outright winner of the event going to Andrew Penny and Rhys Llewellyn in a 4WD Subaru.
